Dr Caoimhe Hartley

So the best thing to do is either use the progesterone vaginally, and I'd chat to your prescriber about that, or look at a Mirena coil, or we increase the dose.

There's guidelines around all of that in a more specific way.

I don't lose sleep over it, to be honest.

Great.

Like tons.

OK.

And it is it's actually so interesting, isn't it?

Because

Yeah, so I was at a talk last year and they were talking about ADHD and they were saying the reason that boys are diagnosed with it more frequently.

Apologies if I'm wrong about this, it's not my area specifically, but my understanding is that women are just the amount of masking that goes on with young girls.

And then also the kind of expectation you can associate it more with boys.

Boys tend to be a bit more maybe boisterous and energetic and physical, which is something that we think of when we think of ADHD.

So they're much more likely to get a diagnosis.

And so women go under the radar, just like you said, and then learn to sort of compensate and work around it, I guess.

And then because of the hormonal shift and estrogen seems to be a modulator of dopamine, so you lose your estrogen, your dopamine levels, they also go off the rails and that unmasks ADHD that you maybe were previously coping with.

I've had this like just tsunami of women in the last two years who have had a recent adult diagnosis of ADHD.

And it's a real mix of women who want to treat it and go on medication specific for ADHD.

And then other women who are just happy to have the diagnosis and kind of understand themselves a little.

Now I get kind of why I am the way I am.

And it's just an explanation.